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15 hours ago
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It's one of the biggest unanswered questions in science: if there's life beyond Earth, why hasn't it contacted us yet?
Now, a scientist claims to have the answer – and it suggests aliens are more similar to us than we thought.
Dr Robin Corbet, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, thinks aliens got bored of trying to find us and simply stopped looking.
In a new paper, he suggests extraterrestrial civilizations are only a little bit more technologically advanced than us.
As a result, they reached the upper limit of what their technology is capable of, gave up and lost interest.
'In the mundane perspective, where other civilizations are not that much more advanced, a limit to exploration would arise,' said Dr Corbet.
The expert says Proxima Centauri b – a planet in another solar system 4 light years away – could be a 'promising' location for life to exist.
However, with humanity's present spacecraft speeds, it would take around 100,000 years to reach it.
Films like 'ET' (pictured) and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' suggest aliens are sophisticated enough reach other worlds - but an expert claims they might only be a bit more clever than us
For decades, sci-fi films and comics have depicted aliens as sophisticated civilizations using technology beyond our comprehension.
This may have fueled the assumption that they are capable of successfully beaming messages to other planets, including our own.
For example, they could send out 'swarms of interstellar robotic probes' or powerful beacons in the form of light or sound that could be detected across the galaxy.
Films like 'ET' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' even suggest they're able to visit other worlds in their high-powered spaceships.
But according to Dr Corbet, extraterrestrials might not be able to do this because their technology level is only a bit ahead of us – akin to 'an iPhone 42 rather than an iPhone 17'.
In fact, their technology may not include 'significant leaps equivalent to harnessing electricity or rely on as yet unknown laws of physics', he says in his paper.
Even if aliens do have a capable beacon transmitter, it is not clear that there would be 'much motivation' to operate it for millions or billions of years until their signal is noticed.
What's more, significant colonization or exploration of the galaxy would 'have to have benefits that outweigh the costs', he adds. If life on Earth is any indicator, costly projects would get ditched if they soon prove too difficult.
In 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', an Indiana man finds his quiet and ordinary daily life turned upside down after a close encounter with a UFO
Do aliens exist?
If you ask an astronomer if aliens exist, the high likelihood is they'll say yes.
The universe is mind-bogglingly vast and we have only explored a very tiny fragment of it, so there's bound to be some other form of life out there.
According to Erik Zackrisson, an astrophysicist at Uppsala University in Sweden, there are 70 quintillion planets in the universe - that's 7 followed by 20 zeroes.
So the very fact we exist here on Earth would make it incredibly unlikely that nowhere else in the universe has some kind of conscious life too.
However, some detractors cite the Fermi paradox - the fact there's a lack of evidence for extraterrestrials despite various high estimates for their probability. In other words, if there is alien life, why have we not found any evidence for it?
Dr Corbet's theory, known as the 'radically mundane' theory, offers an answer to the 'Fermi paradox' – the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for alien civilizations and high estimates for their probability.
In effect, the paradox asks, if there is so much extraterrestrial life, why have we not found any evidence for it?
Simply, it could be that lifeforms in the universe are stuck in the same boat, in the sense that no one quite has the capacity to do so.
Alternatively, some aliens do have the technology but are so far away from us to make it impossible.
'The Fermi paradox may be explained if the galaxy contains a modest number of technological civilizations, with technology levels that, while more advanced than contemporary Earth, are nowhere near the 'super-science' levels that could result in readily detectable astro-engineering,' Dr Corbet concludes in his paper, yet to be peer-reviewed.
While it might sound compelling, Professor Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Manchester, voiced reservations regarding the radically mundane theory.
'It projects a very human-like apathy on to the rest of the cosmos,' he told the Guardian.
'I find it hard to believe that all intelligent life would be so uniformly dull.'
Extraterrestrial life has never been discovered, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist (file photo)
There are already several possible answers to the Fermi paradox, including extraterrestrial life being too scared of 'dangerous' and 'violent' humans to want to come here.
Dr Gordon Gallup, a biopsychologist at the University of Albany, said in a 2022 paper: 'If there is intelligent life elsewhere, they may view humans as extremely dangerous.
'Maybe this is why there is no proof or compelling evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence – we pose too great a risk, and they do not want to be discovered.'
Alternatively, aliens are unrecognizable because they are so far advanced and have transcended to a different realm, another theory alleges.
Regardless of the answer to the paradox, successfully sending and receiving messages between aliens could one day happen.
On Earth, scientists have already tried to beam messages towards other solar systems in radio or light signals, akin to sending information in an email via the internet.
According to Mark Buchanan, a physicist and writer in the UK, the best way to make contact with alien life would be to send light signals because they travel so fast.
'And there are many ways to send signals of a kind that do not get changed by any natural process, so another civilization would see them as coming from an intelligence,' he told the Daily Mail.
WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?
The Fermi Paradox questions why, given the estimated 200-400 billion stars and at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy, there have been no signs of alien life.
The contradiction is named after its creator, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.
He first posed the question back in 1950.
Fermi believed it was too extraordinary that a single extra-terrestrial signal or engineering project has yet to be detected in the universe — despite its immense vastness.
Fermi concluded there must a barrier that limits the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced space-colonising civilisations.
This barrier is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Filter'.
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi devised the so-called Fermi Paradox in the 1950s, which explores why there is no sign of alien life, despite the 100 billion planets in our galaxy
If the main obstacle preventing the colonisation of other planets is not in our past, then the barrier that will stop humanity's prospects of reaching other worlds must lie in our future, scientists have theorised.
Professor Brian Cox believes the advances in science and engineering required by a civilisation to start conquering the stars will ultimately lead to its destruction.
He said: 'One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself.
‘It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.'
Other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox include that intelligent alien species are out there, but lack the necessary technology to communicate with Earth.
Some believe that the distances between intelligent civilisations are too great to allow any kind of two-way communication.
If two worlds are separated by several thousand light years, it's possible that one or both civilisations would become extinct before a dialogue can be established.
The so-called Zoo hypothesis claims intelligent alien life is out there, but deliberately avoids any contact with life on Earth to allow its natural evolution.
